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My reasoning for evaluating the relevancy of this app: 1. If the food being scanned has a nutrition label, I don't need this app. 2. If there's no nutrition l

My reasoning for evaluating the relevancy of this app: 1. If the food being scanned has a nutrition label, I don't need this app. 2. If there's no nutrition label, the app can't possibly extrapolate the nutritional information. It can't estimate portion size or the ingredients in the recipe. 3. If the app can't extrapolate nutritional information, I don't need this app. 4. I don't need this app.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
kh_hk 2y ago
Recently I have started running dish descriptions through deepseek-r1:8b to give a rough estimate on calories and it is sufficient, at least for my cooking. Of course this will hallucinate on complex cases, and arguably simple dishes are easy to count. Still, counting by hand is tedious compared. I am happy with a rough number on a dish, I do not need precision to know if I am not eating enough calories. Note there are errors on the result and reasoning, but still this dish should be around the ballpark of 500 cal. I figure running this through a larger model might be more accurate. I wondered if maybe I wanted to create an app for that, but I am happy not to. Yes, simple descriptions could be parsed with NLP, and yes, calories could be inferred with a database. >>> Calorie count of a dish that has: rice, broccoli, two pieces of turkey, and a fri ... ed egg. Assume this is a normal portion, for instance, there are 80g of rice.. Re ... turn the result in a json structure <think> Alright, so I need to figure out the calorie count for a dish that includes rice, broccoli, two pieces of turkey, and a fried egg. The user mentioned it's a normal portion, like 80g of rice. Hmm, okay, let me break this down step by step. First, I should find out how many calories are in each ingredient separately. Let's start with the rice. Rice is a common staple, so I think 80g of cooked rice has about 130 calories. I've seen that number before, but I should double-check to make sure it's accurate. Next up is broccoli. Broccoli is pretty low in calories, right? A portion of around 100g should be about 25-30 calories. Wait, maybe a bit more if it's raw or cooked differently, but I think for this purpose, 35 calories is reasonable. Then there are two pieces of turkey. Turkey can vary based on the cut and whether it's cooked. Let's assume these are regular chicken breast slices, each around 50g. Each slice would have about 110 calories, so two pieces would be around 220 calories. But I should make sure that I'm not confusing turkey with another type of meat. Turkey does tend to be a bit higher in calories than chicken sometimes, but 110 per slice seems right. Lastly, the fried egg. A single fried egg is usually about 140-150 calories depending on how it's made. Since there's just one egg, that's around 140 calories. I think that's correct because yolks add a good number of calories due to fat content. Now, adding all these up: rice (130) + broccoli (35) + turkey (220) + egg (140). Let me sum them: 130 plus 35 is 165, plus 220 makes 385, and then plus 140 gives 525. So the total would be around 525 calories. Wait a second, maybe I should consider if there are any other ingredients or whether portions were different. For instance, sometimes turkey portions can be larger or smaller depending on the meal. But since it's specified as two pieces, each at about 50g, that seems okay. Also, considering preparation methods: fried egg might have more calories if it's done in a certain way, but I think one fried egg is standard. Broccoli's calorie count could vary slightly, but for simplicity, the 35 seems fine. Is there any chance I'm missing something? Maybe adding spices or sauces, but unless specified, I shouldn't assume that. So the total should be around 525 calories in a normal portion as described. </think> ```json { "calories": { "rice": 130, "broccoli": 35, "turkey": 220, "fried egg": 140, "total": 525 } } ```
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
  - kh_hk 2y ago
    Funnily enough, it keeps inventing different excuses to come up with a particular number that is more or less consistent :) On other tries of the same prompt it happily adds oil, but miscounts other parts
moconnor 2y ago
I don’t see why you believe 2 would be true. I expect a strong correlation between the visual appearance of food and its caloric content etc.
- BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
  > I expect a strong correlation between the visual appearance of food and its caloric content This doesn't pass even simple scrutiny. There are so many caloric ingredients that aren't visible in food. You can't tell just by looking whether a rice dish contains half a stick of butter.
  - mr_mitm 2y ago
    Or if it's diet coke or regular coke. Yes, it's drinks, not food, but the same concept applies. They claim 90% accuracy, whatever that means, but I have my doubts regarding it's usefulness.
- banqjls 2y ago
  This is completely wrong. For example, you can increase the amount of oil or butter in a recipe, doubling or tripling its calorie count, and you would never be able to tell from a picture.
  - weird-eye-issue 2y ago
    I imagine it just autofills the information and then you can edit it to make it more accurate You'd have to be kind of stupid to expect it to actually be 100% accurate for all meals
    - anothermoron 2y ago
      Therefore... 4. I don't need this app.
    - arghwhat 2y ago
      The point of the app is to figure out the calories of a meal automatically by taking a photo. Without knowing the amount of sugar, butter, oil, etc. is used in a dish, one cannot know if a dish is worth 250 kilocalories or 750 kilocalories. If I need to manually fill in details of ingredients and amounts to get to the calories to be have an error margin of less than 100%, then the app is not useful and is at best misleading.
jwhiles 2y ago
It's not about being right, it's about appearing to be right
- blitzar 2y ago
  > It's not about being right, it's about appearing to be right What you need is a LLM.
  - fph 2y ago
    Isn't this basically what they used, a multimodal AI?
- lamp_book 2y ago
  I think the key insight here is that actually counting calories is not needed by the app's demographic. Possibly just getting them to pay attention to what they are eating is enough for them to see progress or at least feel like they are doing something.
maximustroll 2y ago
[flagged]
- skyyler 2y ago
  Money and fame aren't everything. Some people have values and morals that they live by.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

kh_hk 2y ago

Recently I have started running dish descriptions through deepseek-r1:8b to give a rough estimate on calories and it is sufficient, at least for my cooking. Of course this will hallucinate on complex cases, and arguably simple dishes are easy to count. Still, counting by hand is tedious compared. I am happy with a rough number on a dish, I do not need precision to know if I am not eating enough calories. Note there are errors on the result and reasoning, but still this dish should be around the ballpark of 500 cal. I figure running this through a larger model might be more accurate. I wondered if maybe I wanted to create an app for that, but I am happy not to. Yes, simple descriptions could be parsed with NLP, and yes, calories could be inferred with a database. >>> Calorie count of a dish that has: rice, broccoli, two pieces of turkey, and a fri ... ed egg. Assume this is a normal portion, for instance, there are 80g of rice.. Re ... turn the result in a json structure <think> Alright, so I need to figure out the calorie count for a dish that includes rice, broccoli, two pieces of turkey, and a fried egg. The user mentioned it's a normal portion, like 80g of rice. Hmm, okay, let me break this down step by step. First, I should find out how many calories are in each ingredient separately. Let's start with the rice. Rice is a common staple, so I think 80g of cooked rice has about 130 calories. I've seen that number before, but I should double-check to make sure it's accurate. Next up is broccoli. Broccoli is pretty low in calories, right? A portion of around 100g should be about 25-30 calories. Wait, maybe a bit more if it's raw or cooked differently, but I think for this purpose, 35 calories is reasonable. Then there are two pieces of turkey. Turkey can vary based on the cut and whether it's cooked. Let's assume these are regular chicken breast slices, each around 50g. Each slice would have about 110 calories, so two pieces would be around 220 calories. But I should make sure that I'm not confusing turkey with another type of meat. Turkey does tend to be a bit higher in calories than chicken sometimes, but 110 per slice seems right. Lastly, the fried egg. A single fried egg is usually about 140-150 calories depending on how it's made. Since there's just one egg, that's around 140 calories. I think that's correct because yolks add a good number of calories due to fat content. Now, adding all these up: rice (130) + broccoli (35) + turkey (220) + egg (140). Let me sum them: 130 plus 35 is 165, plus 220 makes 385, and then plus 140 gives 525. So the total would be around 525 calories. Wait a second, maybe I should consider if there are any other ingredients or whether portions were different. For instance, sometimes turkey portions can be larger or smaller depending on the meal. But since it's specified as two pieces, each at about 50g, that seems okay. Also, considering preparation methods: fried egg might have more calories if it's done in a certain way, but I think one fried egg is standard. Broccoli's calorie count could vary slightly, but for simplicity, the 35 seems fine. Is there any chance I'm missing something? Maybe adding spices or sauces, but unless specified, I shouldn't assume that. So the total should be around 525 calories in a normal portion as described. </think> ```json { "calories": { "rice": 130, "broccoli": 35, "turkey": 220, "fried egg": 140, "total": 525 } } ```

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
- kh_hk 2y ago
  Funnily enough, it keeps inventing different excuses to come up with a particular number that is more or less consistent :) On other tries of the same prompt it happily adds oil, but miscounts other parts

moconnor 2y ago

I don’t see why you believe 2 would be true. I expect a strong correlation between the visual appearance of food and its caloric content etc.

BugsJustFindMe 2y ago
> I expect a strong correlation between the visual appearance of food and its caloric content This doesn't pass even simple scrutiny. There are so many caloric ingredients that aren't visible in food. You can't tell just by looking whether a rice dish contains half a stick of butter.
- mr_mitm 2y ago
  Or if it's diet coke or regular coke. Yes, it's drinks, not food, but the same concept applies. They claim 90% accuracy, whatever that means, but I have my doubts regarding it's usefulness.
banqjls 2y ago
This is completely wrong. For example, you can increase the amount of oil or butter in a recipe, doubling or tripling its calorie count, and you would never be able to tell from a picture.
- weird-eye-issue 2y ago
  I imagine it just autofills the information and then you can edit it to make it more accurate You'd have to be kind of stupid to expect it to actually be 100% accurate for all meals
  - anothermoron 2y ago
    Therefore... 4. I don't need this app.
  - arghwhat 2y ago
    The point of the app is to figure out the calories of a meal automatically by taking a photo. Without knowing the amount of sugar, butter, oil, etc. is used in a dish, one cannot know if a dish is worth 250 kilocalories or 750 kilocalories. If I need to manually fill in details of ingredients and amounts to get to the calories to be have an error margin of less than 100%, then the app is not useful and is at best misleading.

jwhiles 2y ago

It's not about being right, it's about appearing to be right

blitzar 2y ago
> It's not about being right, it's about appearing to be right What you need is a LLM.
- fph 2y ago
  Isn't this basically what they used, a multimodal AI?
lamp_book 2y ago
I think the key insight here is that actually counting calories is not needed by the app's demographic. Possibly just getting them to pay attention to what they are eating is enough for them to see progress or at least feel like they are doing something.

maximustroll 2y ago

[flagged]

skyyler 2y ago
Money and fame aren't everything. Some people have values and morals that they live by.